Friday, July 15, 2016

Paleo-Orthodoxy: Was Jesus an Essene?

The
Essenes were a sect of Second
Temple Judaismthat flourished from the
2nd century BC to the 1st century AD which some scholars claim
seceded from the Zadokitepriests.Being much fewer in
number than the Phariseesand the Sadducees(the other two major
sects at the time), the Essenes lived in various cities but
congregated in communal life dedicated to asceticism(some groups practiced
celibacy), voluntary poverty,
and daily
ritual immersion. Jewish historian Josephusrecords that the Essenes
existed in large numbers, and thousands lived throughout Roman
Judaea.Could Jesus have been an Essene? Was he raised in an Essene community?

Edmond
Bordeaux Szekely (1905–1979)
was a Hungarian
philologist, linguist,
philosopher, psychologist and natural living advocate.Szekely
claimed to have translated a text he discovered at the Vatican
in
1923, called The
Essene Gospel of Peace,which
he published in four parts over several decades. With the 1974
edition, he also included what he said was the complete original
Hebrew text from which he translated a portion of his book. In
1928 Szekely founded the International
Biogenic Society.
He
traveled widely, to such places as Tahiti, Africa, the Carpathians,
France, and Eastern Europe. Szekely
claimed that, while studying at the Vatican
in
1923, he had found and translated several obscure Hebrew
and
Aramaic
texts
which he said proved the Essenes
were
vegetarians,
and that vegetarianism was central to the teachings of Jesus.
These texts became The
Essene Gospel of Peace and
The
Essene Book of Revelation.
Another version of the story is that, in thescriptorium
of
the Benedictine monastery of Monte
Cassino, he
found the original Hebrew text of The
Essene Gospel of Peace.1

Szekely
later said that he recognized several fragments in these that were
either similar, or identical, to various passages from the Old and
New Testaments, and the Dead
Sea Scrolls.2

Book
1, which he said constituted an eighth of the material, was published
in 1936. He published more material in following years, including
Books 2 and 3 in 1974, which with Book 1, he said, make up a third of
the material.

The
contents of the books is interesting, to say the least. It contains
some rather odd teachings which are placed in Jesus' mouth. For
example, Jesus gives a discourse that is clearly pantheistic:

“Happy
are you, that you would cast off the power of Satan, for I will lead
you into the kingdom of our Mother's angels, where the power of Satan
cannot enter. And
they asked him in amazement: "Who is our Mother and which her
angels? And where is her kingdom?"

"Your
Mother is in you, and you in her. She bore you, she gives you life.
it was she who gave to you your body, and to her shall you one day
give it back again. Happy are you when you come to know her and her
kingdom; if you receive your Mother's angels and if you do her laws.
I tell you truly, he who does these things shall never see
disease. For the power of our Mother is above all. And it destroys
Satan and his kingdom, and has rule over all your bodies and all
living things."

"The
blood which runs in us is born of the blood of our Earthly Mother.
Her blood falls from the clouds; leaps from the womb of the earth;
babbles in the brooks of the mountains; flows wide in the rivers of
the plains; sleeps in the lakes; rages mightily in tempestuous seas.

"The
air which we breathe is born of the breath of our Earthly Mother. Her
breath is azure in the heights of t heavens; soughs in the tops of
the mountains; whispers the leaves of the forest; billows over the
cornfields; slumbers in the deep valleys, burns hot in the desert.

"The
hardness of our bones is born of the bones of our Earthly Mother, of
the rocks and of the stones. They stand naked to the heavens on the
tops of mountains; are as giants that lie sleeping on the sides of
the mountains, as idols set in the desert, and are hidden in the
deepness of the earth.

"The
tenderness of our flesh is born of the flesh of our Earthly Mother;
whose flesh waxes yellow and red in the fruits of the trees, and
nurtures us in the furrows of the fields.

"Our
bowels are born of the bowels of our Earthly Mother, and are hid from
our eyes, like the invisible depths of the earth.

"The
light of our eyes, the hearing of our ears, both are born of the
colors and the sounds of our Earthly Mother; which enclose us about,
as the waves of the sea a fish, as the eddying air a bird.

"I
tell you in very truth, Man is the Son of the Earthly Mother, and
from her did the Son of Man receive his whole body, even as the body
of the newborn babe is born of the womb of his mother. I tell you
truly, you are one with the Earthly Mother; she is in you, and you in
her. Of her were you born, in her do you live, and to her shall you
return again. Keep, therefore, her laws, for none can live long,
neither be happy, but he who honors his Earthly Mother and does her
laws.”3

Szekely
developed a Creed from the Essene Gospel of Peace, which is as
follows:

We
believe that our most precious possession is Life.

We
believe we shall mobilize all the forces of Life against the forces
of death.

We
believe mutual understanding leads toward mutual cooperation; that
mutual cooperation leads toward Peace; and that Peace is the only
way of survival for mankind.

We
believe that we shall preserve instead of waste our natural
resources, which are the heritage of our children.

We
believe that we shall avoid the pollution of our air, water and
soil, the basic preconditions of life.

We
believe that we shall preserve the vegetation of our planet: the
humble grass which came 50 million years ago and the majestic trees
which came 20 million years ago, to prepare our planet for mankind.

We
believe that we shall eat only fresh, natural, pure, whole foods,
without chemicals and artificial processing.

We
believe that we shall lead a simple, natural, creative life,
absorbing all the sources of energy, harmony and knowledge, in and
around us.

We
believe that the improvement of life and mankind on our planet must
start with individual efforts, as the whole depends on the atoms
composing it.

We
believe in fatherhood of God, the Motherhood of Nature, and the
Brotherhood of Man.

It would be difficult to distinguish the crux of these teachings (as summed up in the final statement above) from Freemasonry.

While
Szekely's claimed translations of the so-called "Essene
Texts" have drawn interest from followers of various New Age
cults, the original manuscripts have never been located, and
Szekely's claims have been considered fraud by religious scholars.

When
University of Lund theologian and Biblical scholar Per
Beskowinvestigated
Szekely's claims in Strange
Tales About Jesus,
both the Vatican and the National Library of Vienna denied that the
original manuscripts existed. The Vaticanalso
denied that Szekely had ever been admitted to the Vatican Archives in
1923. The third claimed manuscript source was the library at
Monte
Cassino,
which was destroyed during World War II.4

Some
critics have pointed out that Szekely, after originally publishing a
French translation, first published it in English in 1937 as The
Gospel of Peace of Jesus Christ by the Disciple John.
After the discovery of the Dead
Sea Scrollsin
the 1940s and intense public interest in the Essenes, Szekely
republished an updated version as The
Essene Gospel of John.
The scrolls appearing on the title page of later editions are not the
manuscripts Szekely claimed to translate, but a reversed image of a
Dead Sea Scroll from Professor Millar
Burrows'5
book, The
Dead Sea Scrolls,
published in 1958.

It is abundantly clear that
we cannot accept the claims of Szekely, nor of his Essene myth.

Others have picked up on this same hypothesis, though they do not
resort to fabricated pseudo-gospels for support. The problem with the
Essene hypothesis is that Jesus' teachings and practices were
extremely different from those of the Essenes.

For example:

Jesus’s
group was open, while the Essenes were exclusive.

Jesus
taught love, while the Essenes taught hatred of outsiders.

Jesus
was not concerned with ritual purity and taboos, but Essenes were.

Jesus
associated with the unclean, but for Essenes it was anathema.

Jesus
associated with gentiles, but for Essenes it was anathema.

Jesus
mixed with women, but for Essenes it was anathema.

Jesus
had a reputation as a wine bibber and a glutton, but Essenes were
ascetic.

Essenes
were not interested in missionary work, but Jesus was.

Jesus,
not the Essenes, was famous for healing miracles.

Jesus
did not require any prolonged initiation but the Essenes needed
three years.

Jesus
had twelve apostles with three special ones but did not have a clear
cut hierarchy as the Essenes did.

Jesus
told his supporters not to swear an oath whereas the Essenes swore
solemn oaths when they entered the community.

Jesus
taught the simplicity of the Gospel, but the Essenes established
endless laws and rules.

Jesus
believed in the resurrection of the dead at the End Time but there
is no clear evidence that Essenes did.

Jesus
never mentioned the names of the angels but Essenes had to remember
them and had an extensive angelology.

Jesus
taught about the coming kingdom of God but the Essenes never used
the expression.

Jesus
was liberal regarding the Sabbath, while Essenes were extremely
strict.

It is
apparent that Jesus' teachings and practices were quite different
from those of the Essenes. While Jesus may certainly have known some
Essenes, he clearly was not a member of their community.